The Parties Involved in the Process

There are few intermediate parties involved in the transaction that takes place as soon as the customer places an order. The process seems long but it never takes more than a few minutes. All these parties play an important role during the transaction and the process cannot be just complete without everyone contributing their services.

Everyone has a different role and let us comprehend their services one by one for a better perception. When a customer orders something the merchant sends the details to the merchant account gateway. The information includes customer's name, address, identification info and amount of purchase. The payment gateway on receiving the information checks the database to identify the acquiring bank and sends the information to the payment processor. The payment processor then sends the required information to the issuing bank. The issuing bank then verifies everything including the billing address. If there are enough funds and everything matches, the issuing bank then sends authorization code to the payment processor and then blocks the mentioned amount. In this way, the merchant receives the information whether to accept or deny the transaction.

All these steps just take a few minutes and all these parties (acquiring bank, issuing bank, payment processor and payment gateway) are structurally interconnected through various channels and work according to a specific pattern.